Lifehacker: The Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, and Better is a compilation of the best 121 hacks, tricks, and downloads from Lifehacker's archives. This dead tree version of the web site transforms scores of one-off blog posts into comprehensive, edited tutorials, some of which will be familiar to longtime readers, others of which are completely new.

Availability:Lifehacker is available in paperback from Amazon, on Kindle, as an epub, and in bookstores everywhere.Price: Varies. Currently the best price is for the epub from my publisher, Wiley; buy the epub here and use the promo code LHB3E for 40% off through June 30th. The final price will be $11.99 + tax.What's It All About? For a better understanding of what Lifehacker is about, read the book's introduction.

Read a little about what's new below, or jump down to the Table of Contents for the mega-roundup. Huge thanks to my co-author and Lifehacker founder Gina Trapani and to all of you for helping us hone the craft of life hacks. (My apologies: I had to break the post into a few separate pages because it exceeds the maximum size for our publishing system.)

What's the Difference Between the Book and the Site?

The most important difference between Lifehacker
the book and Lifehacker the site is that the book culls together what Gina and I consider to be the most valuable, time-saving, and important things we've highlighted in Lifehacker's six years on the internet, and it does so in a more organized, more thorough way. Just by the nature of the book versus the web site, the former is extremely tightly curated, while the latter is moving and changing every day. The book contains plenty of new hacks you won't find on the site, but the two are very much a part of one another.

What's New in the Third Edition?

A lot. If you need a reminder of how quickly technology transforms the way we live, look back no further than the three years between this and the previous edition of this book, released in March of 2008.

Microsoft launched Windows 7 in the fall of 2009, a considerable and welcome step forward not only for the Windows operating system, but for Windows users. (If you recall, three years ago many Windows users still used Windows XP, having decided that an operating system first released in 2001 was superior to the maligned Windows Vista.) In the summer of 2008, Apple launched their App Store and substantially evolved the iOS operating system, creating new expectations for all smart phones and mobile devices along the way. Google evolved beyond search and productivity webapps, releasing their own web browser, Google Chrome (late summer, 2008) and mobile operating system, Android (fall, 2008). Tablet computers have finally reached mass appeal, starting with the consumer-friendly iPad and expanding to devices powered by Android, BlackBerry, and other mobile operating systems.

This edition reflects these considerable changes. Most significantly, Chapter 9 focuses exclusively on getting more from your smart phone — a now ubiquitous piece of personal technology that was in its nascence when the previous edition was released. You'll also find new and updated hacks in every chapter, employing tools and operating system features that weren't available three years ago. Every OS-specific hack in this book has been updated to work with the most recent versions of Windows and Mac OS X.

Lifehacker Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Control Your Email

Hack 1
Empty Your Inbox (and Keep It Empty)

Level: Easy
Platform: All

When you can empty your inbox on a regular basis, you've reached the ultimate level of email control.

Hack 2
Decrease Your Email Response Time

Level: Easy
Platform: All

Responding to your email in a timely, professional manner is one of the best things you can do for your career. But no one emerges from the womb with a natural talent for parrying a constant stream of new messages popping up in front of your face all day long. Email responsiveness is an acquired skill-the one that just may differentiate you from everyone else in the world overwhelmed by an overloaded inbox.

Hack 6
Master Message Search

Level: Easy
Platform: All

In the physical world, you can't throw years' worth of letters, cards, and memos into a drawer and then pick out the one Tom sent you about that fabulous rental he got in Key West back in 2007 in seconds. However, that is absolutely possible (and simple with a little know-how) in an email folder containing thousands of messages.

Hack 7
Future-Proof Your Email Address

Level: Easy
Platform: All

You've probably got as many email addresses as you do pairs of socks, but you don't want to change them as often. In fact, switching your primary email address can be a big inconvenience that leads to missed messages and lost relationships.

Hack 8
Consolidate Multiple Email Addresses with Gmail

Gmail is not only an email host, it's an email client that can fetch mail from any number of external services and consolidate it all right there in your Gmail inbox.

Hack 9
Script and Automate Repetitive Responses

Level: Medium
Platform: All with Mozilla Thunderbird

To knock down repetitive email quickly, build up a set of scripted email responses that you can drop into emails quickly, personalize if necessary, and send off without spending the time composing the same information every time.

Hack 10
Filter Low-Priority Messages ('Bacn')

Level: Easy
Platform: All

Millions of email messages course over the Internet per second, and a bunch of them land in your inbox. Your spam filter helps shuttle junk mail out of sight, but what about messages from cc-happy co-workers, Aunt Eunice's forwarded emails, Facebook friend notifications, Google Alerts, and mailing list messages that clutter your inbox with low-priority noise?

Chapter 2: Organize Your Data

Hack 11
Organize Your Documents Folder

Level: Easy
Platform: All

If you've had a computer for any length of time you know that your documents folder gets disorganized really fast. If your current file organization system works for you, congratulations. But if you frequently find yourself letting files clutter your computer's desktop, or if you spend time arranging files in a deep, complicated hierarchy of folders, it's time for a revamp.

Hack 12
Instantly Retrieve Files Stored on Your Hard Drive

Level: Medium
Platform: Windows, Mac OS X

Every minute you spend on your computer, you're collecting more and more data, documents, and information to do your job and get on with your life. Instant retrieval of the bit or byte that you need right this very second is an essential requirement in the digital age.

Hack 13
Overhaul Your Filing Cabinet

Level: Easy
Platform: All

One of the main clutter culprits in most offices is the To File pile. Often this heap spontaneously appears right on top of or next to the filing cabinet, which is pretty silly. Instead of adding stuff to the pile, why wouldn't you just file it? The reason is generally an unworkable, messy, overflowing file cabinet.

Hack 15
Securely Track Your Passwords

Level: Advanced
Platform: All

Sometimes you just have to write down a password to remember it. Don't do it where others can read it, like on a Post-It note or in an easy-to-read text file or Word document. You can keep a secure and searchable database of those hard-to-remember passwords using free password management tool LastPass.

Hack 16
Tag Your Bookmarks

The web gets bigger every day, and so does your bookmark list. Stores your bookmarks online and associate keywords (called tags) to each for easy retrieval.

Hack 17
Organize Your Digital Photos

Level: Easy
Platform: Windows, Mac OS X

After even just a few months of taking photos, it's easy to wind up with a hard drive cluttered with a bunch of folders filled with images named things like IMG_8394.jpg. Pictures don't mean anything unless someone sees them, and no one will see the photos buried on your computer if you can't find the best ones.

Hack 18
Corral Media Across Folders and Drives (New in 3rd Edition!)

Level: Easy
Platform: Windows 7

It's not always practical to store all your files in your Documents folder, which is why Microsoft introduced a new Libraries feature in Windows 7 that enables you to corral folders in different locations (and on different hard drives). Here's how it works.

Encrypting groups of sensitive files is a good start, but if you have a lot of sensitive material on your PC and don't want to hassle with picking and choosing which belong in your encrypted volume and which don't, you can use TrueCrypt to encrypt your entire system drive so that every file on your computer is encrypted by default.

The only thing standing between a hacker and your Google account - and more important, your sensitive information - is your password. Even if you have the strongest password you can possibly randomly generate, if people were to discover that password, they'd have access to all the information in your account.

Hack 24
Design Your Own Planner

Level: Easy
Platform: All

There are lots of good reasons to ditch your expensive, electronic PDA for a paper-based planner system: cost, portability, and maintenance, to name a few. Paper-based planners never run out of battery juice or memory; they never crash or refuse to work the way you expect.

Hack 26
Set Up a Morning Dash

Level: Easy
Platform: All

There is one way to ensure that you'll knock at least one thing off your list: Dedicate the first hour of your day to your most important task-before you check your email, paper inbox, or go to any meetings.

Hack 31
Control Your Workday

Level: Easy
Platform: All

Getting out of the office on time is tough when there's always another task, project, or drive-by boss request to knock out before you leave. It's easy to lose a day checking email, going to meetings, and putting out fires only to find that at 5 or 6 or 7 p.m., you haven't gotten started on something critical.